by Tracie Frank Mayer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2016
A parent’s inspiring memoir, full of love, humor, and heartache.
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A mother faces her child’s congenital heart condition in this debut book.
Mayer opens her work in December 1984, when she and her husband, Helmut, received alarming news about their only child, Marc, a mere 13 days after his birth. The jarring title came from the mouth of a cardiologist who gravely and insensitively assessed Marc’s prognosis at the beginning of their journey. Mayer, aghast, remembers thinking, “Incompatible with nature? What did that mean? Was I some kind of monster? How do you look a mother in her face and utter such a thing?” What sets this memoir apart is the author’s distinct sense of cultural displacement as an African-American woman living in Germany with a rudimentary grasp of the language at best. Consequently, a situation that was already stressful became even more exasperating as she struggled to communicate with medical professionals. Mayer, however, is courteous to her readers: on the few occasions when German is not directly translated into English, she provides enough context clues to convey the message in a comfortable and unobtrusive manner. Critically, her family in the Seattle area lent great support despite the distance, whether on the phone or through inherited refrains that Mayer invoked in times of crisis, such as “ain’t no givin’ up and no givin’ out” or “let go and let God.” These examples are indicative of the linguistic richness to be found throughout the text. There are also moments of humor despite the heavy subject matter, including this gem from the author’s mother that Mayer suddenly recalled during an awkward silence after she questioned the head doctor’s account of the treatments Marc had received on a particular day: “It’s so quiet you can hear a mouse piss on cotton.” Beyond the chronological reporting in this testament to a parent’s strength, the author shares lessons learned as a child and young adult via poignant flashbacks, especially regarding her relationship with her father. Thus, in addition to recounting harrowing events surrounding Marc’s condition, she allows herself space to reflect on philosophical notions like the slippery nature of time: “Out of reach, uncontrollable, too much and never enough, indeed it is too often the most mangled thread in the fabric of our human existence.”
A parent’s inspiring memoir, full of love, humor, and heartache.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5372-0129-0
Page Count: 358
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 2012
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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by Cheryl Strayed ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2015
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.
A lightweight collection of self-help snippets from the bestselling author.
What makes a quote a quote? Does it have to be quoted by someone other than the original author? Apparently not, if we take Strayed’s collection of truisms as an example. The well-known memoirist (Wild), novelist (Torch), and radio-show host (“Dear Sugar”) pulls lines from her previous pages and delivers them one at a time in this small, gift-sized book. No excerpt exceeds one page in length, and some are only one line long. Strayed doesn’t reference the books she’s drawing from, so the quotes stand without context and are strung together without apparent attention to structure or narrative flow. Thus, we move back and forth from first-person tales from the Pacific Crest Trail to conversational tidbits to meditations on grief. Some are astoundingly simple, such as Strayed’s declaration that “Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard.” Others call on the author’s unique observations—people who regret what they haven’t done, she writes, end up “mingy, addled, shrink-wrapped versions” of themselves—and offer a reward for wading through obvious advice like “Trust your gut.” Other quotes sound familiar—not necessarily because you’ve read Strayed’s other work, but likely due to the influence of other authors on her writing. When she writes about blooming into your own authenticity, for instance, one is immediately reminded of Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Strayed’s true blossoming happens in her longer works; while this collection might brighten someone’s day—and is sure to sell plenty of copies during the holidays—it’s no substitute for the real thing.
These platitudes need perspective; better to buy the books they came from.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-946909
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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